Cross-posted from the
Inside AdWords blog
Creating ads that can run -- and look beautiful -- across the ever-expanding universe of the world’s more than 2 billion smart phones and tablets
1 is complex to say the least. Last month, we announced that we'd be bringing our popular Lightbox format to mobile devices. Today we're happy to share that these reinvented Lightbox ads are now available for all AdWords advertisers globally.
Bringing Lightbox Ads Across Screens
With
Lightbox ads, it's easy to use existing creative assets to create beautiful, engaging ads that look great on any screen size. These ads pull assets from your YouTube channel, can use uploaded images, or your Google Maps listings to build full screen experiences within a standard Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) ad size. The ability to integrate content from other Google products - like Shopping listings, G+ pages - is coming soon. Because these ads are built in HTML5, using responsive design, the assets dynamically fill the publisher site, mobile app, screen, or device -- desktop and mobile.
Lightbox ads are great at driving brand consideration because they’re billed on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) basis. This helps your digital display dollars go further because your brand’s experience automatically finds a qualified audience -- and you don’t pay if people don’t expand and engage with the creative experience. This expansion happens when people hover over your ad for two seconds to expand it on a desktop, or tap to expand it on a mobile phone or tablet. Plus, the optimization engine behind Lightbox ads learns over time so your campaigns get better at reaching the audience most likely to engage with your message as your campaign runs. Like all of Google's display ad offerings, Lightbox ads work seamlessly with our
audience solutions and can be measured using
Brand Lift reporting.
See how seamless it is to build Lightbox ads with images, videos, and maps, by watching the video below.
Testing Lightboxes with Important Purchases
For 12 years, Universal McCann and Sony have been working together to tell the stories of everything from the newest box office releases to cutting edge consumer technology. They joined our beta test for Lightbox ads to market both.
Sony Electronics is using Lightbox ads to advertise their 4K Ultra TV, their Xperia smartphone, their Playstation, their soundbar, and
more. Sony Pictures is offering people the preview of their new movie, Annie, in theaters on December 19th, featuring the
trailer as well as an
awesome emoji inspired sing-along video.
"We chose to use Lightbox ads for our Q4 campaigns because we needed our content to achieve scale across the web. Our clients spend a lot of time, money and energy creating video assets and making sure they get seen by the most qualified, engaged users is our top priority. Google’s new Lightbox ads help us make sure that happens." said Deborah Gaudette, Senior Vice President, Digital, Universal McCann.
Kate Spade, Ford Italy, Boots UK, Jabong India and Pepsi Australia are also running successful Lightbox campaigns.
By launching this update to Lightbox ads, our goal is to free brand marketers to spend less time dealing with mobile complexity, so you can do what you do best -- engage users with a compelling brand story. We’ll be adding more functionality to this format over the course of 2015. Stay tuned for more enhancements to Lightbox ads in the near future!
Learn more about building your own Lightbox ads in the
AdWords Help Center.
Posted by James Beser, Group Product Manager, Display Ads
1http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Smartphone-Users-Worldwide-Will-Total-175-Billion-2014/1010536
